Studying Bengali/Bangla as an American College Student

In a way, I kind of fell into the role of learning the Bengali language.

Bengali was a language I never thought I would study, until suddenly I was.

I was pretty dumb about South Asia two years ago. Hell, if you asked me where India was, I would’ve said Southeast Asia. That’s how dumb and ignorant I was about the region. I used to pride myself on being some sort of Asia-expert, just because I knew a little about China, Japan, and Korea, as well as the countries around them (e.g. Mongolia, Indonesia, Vietnam). I was a dumb rookie back then, because I didn’t even realize my own heritage is technically Asian, and, in between Iran and Korea, there is Central, Southwest, and South Asia.

It’s going to take a lifetime to reverse the damage that’s ingrained in me, but let’s take a little journey into what has exactly led me into this deep, dark rabbit hole. A story told in places.

Iowa City, Iowa

Well, Ashley, how did you come to this conclusion that you’re an idiot? I somehow got into a writing program at the International Writing Program. It’s called the Summer Institute, and while I don’t believe they’re running for very long, it was an experience I never forgot. As you know now, back then I was this super dumb know-it-all who didn’t really know-it-all. I randomly applied to this program because it sounded cool, but the entire premise of the program was that it was bringing college-aged students from Pakistan, India, and the United States together to talk about writing. Sounds cool, right? We got to go to Iowa and take these amazing seminars about peace, South Asian history, and

It was roughly on the last four days when it really began to hit me that I was an idiot and I needed to do something about it. We had the speaker, a lovely Pakistani woman named Anam Zakaria—check out her work, it’s amazing—who had flown in to talk to us about Partition. I had no idea Partition had even happened, because I was dumb. As some people cried while we read about the narratives women faced during the era, and I felt the sting of tears at the back of my own eyes, I knew that South Asia wasn’t just going to go away as my friends and I flew away from the flat cornfields of Iowa.

As we kept in contact through Whatsapp calls and random “I miss you” messages every so often, I felt this itch to start learning something. I thought it was Hindi or Urdu, the languages that my friends had spoken, but something kept drawing me back into Bangladesh, despite it not being involved with the program. And then I realized it was my education that was drawing me back to this point.

New York City

I went to one of the best fashion schools in the world for college. And something that always struck me was that we alluded into the industry’s effect on countries like Bangladesh, but never actually spoke about it in-depth. Once, in my first semester, we were even asked to debate the pros and cons of sweatshops, and I remember being so disgusted that we had to debate it that I went home and rage typed an entire personal essay about it. I was that mad.

As I began to volunteer and go out in New York City more, I met Bengali people for the first time. In Baltimore, I had never really met anyone that wasn’t southern Indian, so this was really exciting for me as a culture lover. I’m a true introvert and I hate talking to people and associating with them, but my dream is to go into a field where I can study them. From a distance, of course. Minimal interaction.

But during my time in fashion school, I seriously wanted to help out the garment workers. This feeling worsened when the pandemic hit, because I was reading stories about how they weren’t paid anymore, and that the fashion companies were defaulting on their orders in order to combat the declining global demand.

There was no way I could study Bengali on my own. My school had very limited language classes, and Bengali wasn’t one of them. Every time I tried to self-study the script, the swirly part of the letters would activate the dysfunctional part of my brain, the part I swear is dyslexic, and I rendered myself illiterate. I needed a solution, like being dumped in India or Bangladesh.

Kolkata, India

I didn’t actually go to India. I was supposed to, however, until the pandemic got even worse. That’s when I virtually went to Kolkata. I received one of the most prestigious language scholarships in the United States: the Critical Language Scholarship. In a gutsy move during my last semester of college, I randomly switched from applying to Korean (which I had been rejected for the past two years) into being a beginner Bengali applicant. It was a completely and utterly ballsy move, one that I felt like I should have done, but it really clarified my path when I woke up from my nap on that fateful day and found out I was a finalist for Bangla.

We studied out of the American Institute of Indian Studies in Kolkata. I started self-studying the language weeks before the program began because I literally was starting from scratch, and in the orientation videos, we were asked to at least know how to read. I found this stage extremely difficult as someone who had never studied a Sanskrit-based language. Somehow, in my years of Mandarin, I’d lost the ability to comprehend different ways to read alphabets that weren’t Korean. Turkish and Azerbaijani were easy because they were so linked together, but I struggled real hard here.

And then CLS started! I was waking up at six am every day to cram together vocabulary and grammar so I didn’t embarrass myself before going to class while choking down a cup of tea before it was too late to do so. Our schedule was quite interesting for the virtual program because you were in the program for roughly three to five-ish every weekday, then more hours would be dedicated to homework. Bangla classes would be two hours, we would meet with our teachers individually once a week, and then we also had a language partner who helped us out and was kind of like a personal tutor who helped describe culture and whatnot to you.

This was a really interesting experience because the Bangla I had studied was Bangladeshi Bangla, so exploring the nuances between Bangladeshi Bangla and the Bangla spoken in West Bengal was absolutely fascinating. The virtual CLS program was interesting in the way that I got really good at reading and writing, but when it came to listening and speaking, I lacked in those arenas because of the virtual setting. What really got me going about CLS was that it taught me to absolutely love and appreciate Bengali culture, and it has become something I now hold quite dearly.

Baltimore, Maryland

As I’m writing this, I’m taking my gap year in Baltimore. I grew up here. Not a lot of Bengali people here, but I’m still making do. It’s not New York City, but as long as I have the Internet, I am set and ready to go with my daily life. CLS gave us tutoring through their new initiative, CLS Refresh, so I’ve been studying twice a week with a Bangla tutor out of the institute in Kolkata. And, to be quite honest, I’m still falling in love with each passing day. I absolutely adore this language with my heart and hope to study it until the day I die. And, perhaps one day, I’ll go to both West Bengal and Bangladesh and be able to use the language in its home setting. A girl can dream.

I now plan to go to graduate school and continue my study with South Asia, specifically West Bengal, because of the love and devotion I’ve learned from it. CLS truly changed my life by exposing me to this beautiful language and culture—I will forever be grateful.

তাই অনেক ধন্যবাদ । আমার বাংলা একটু খারাপ, কিন্তু আমি অনেক বাংলা শিকতে ছাই । আমিবাংলা ভাষা ভালবাসি । এই ভাষা খুব সুন্দর । এবং বাঙালির সংস্কৃতি ও খুব সুন্দর । রোজ আমি বাঙালি কবিতা, নাটক, আর গান শিখতে চাই ।

আবার অনেক ধন্যবাদ!